Bombardier and American Airlines Execute Firm Agreement with Options for up to 70 CRJ900 NextGen Regional Jets

Bombardier Aerospace announced today that American Airlines Group Inc., of Fort Worth, Texas has signed a firm purchase agreement to acquire 30 CRJ900 NextGen aircraft and has also taken options on an additional 40.

Based on the list price for the CRJ900 NextGen aircraft, the firm order contract is valued at approximately $1.42 billion US and could increase to approximately $3.38 billion US if the 40 options are converted into firm orders.

With this order, American Airlines becomes the first customer to benefit from the latest enhancements to the CRJ900 NextGen regional jet. In addition to the four per cent improvement in fuel burn already achieved with the “NextGen” package, enhancements to the aircraft’s powerplant and ongoing weight reduction initiatives, which include upgraded avionics, will offer a further reduction of up to 1.5 per cent. Altogether, this represents a 5.5 per cent fuel burn reduction over the earlier generation CRJ900 aircraft, and up to 5.0 per cent lower fuel burn compared to announced competitive, in-production jets in the same seat class.

“It’s been an exciting week for American Airlines,” said Peter Warlick, Vice President, Fleet Planning, American Airlines. “We’ve closed our merger with US Airways Group, Inc. and as we begin the work to harmonize the American and US Airways operations, an agreement like this with Bombardier will greatly improve our ability to optimize our flying with the right aircraft to meet customer demand. This order will allow American to lower costs by replacing older aircraft.”

“We congratulate American Airlines and US Airways on their merger and are delighted that the merged airline will use Bombardier aircraft for its present and future fleet requirements,” said Mike Arcamone, President, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft. “Our ongoing commitment to the technological updates of our product offerings is today realized with value enhancements made to the CRJ900 NextGen aircraft. Over the years we have been successfully driving down operating costs by introducing fuel efficiency improvements and maintenance cost reductions. The product enhancements to the CRJ900 NextGen aircraft offer fuel cost savings of up to $500,000 US* per aircraft.”

Including the American Airlines order announced today, Bombardier has recorded firm orders for 1,812 CRJ Series aircraft, including 339 CRJ900 and CRJ900 NextGen aircraft. Worldwide, CRJ Series aircraft are in service with more than 60 airlines and more than 30 customers operate corporate variants of the aircraft. The aircraft are operating in over 50 countries on six continents, and on average, a CRJ aircraft takes off every 10 seconds somewhere in the world. CRJ Series aircraft have transported more than 1.4 billion passengers and have logged more than 38 million flight hours and over 32 million takeoffs and landings.

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Bombardier is the world’s only manufacturer of both planes and trains. Looking far ahead while delivering today, Bombardier is evolving mobility worldwide by answering the call for more efficient, sustainable and enjoyable transportation everywhere. Our vehicles, services and, most of all, our employees are what make us a global leader in transportation.

Bombardier is headquartered in Montréal, Canada. Our shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (BBD) and we are listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability World and North America Indexes. In the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012, we posted revenues of $16.8 billion. News and information are available at bombardier.com or follow us on Twitter @Bombardier.

Notes to Editors

Images of CRJ900 NextGen aircraft in the livery of American Eagle is posted with this release in the news releases section at www.aero.bombardier.com.